Manuscripts and Special Collections

Draft of letter to Nottingham Journal

To the Editor of the Nottingham Journal

Sir

I venture to address the public through the medium of your paper on a subject certainly not unimportant as it implicates in a considerable degree the [two words crossed out] welfare bodily and mental of a very numerous ['body' crossed out] class of fellow beings - I allude to the persons employed in the Embroidering or [word crossed out] as it is termed running of Lace who exhibit such evident appearances of debility of body & consequent laxity of morals as must shock every ['one' crossed out] man in whose breast ['is' crossed out] are implanted the principles of Benevolence.

['The' crossed out] It must strike even the [word crossed out] most indifferent observer that the females of the lower ranks in the Town of Nottingham ['are' crossed out] almost universally appear of a sickly ['and' crossed out] consumptive habit - The fine ruddy glow which mantles on the cheek of a British woman is there displaced by the yellow hue of disease - The swelling protuberant breast ['is here a stranger' crossed out] makes way for the contracted the in bent ['breast' crossed out] chest the stooping shoulders and all the melancholy [words crossed out] diagnostics of the most fatal of diseases. ['And the' crossed out] But the evil does not rest here ['If' crossed out] there is too intimate a connection between the affections of the body and the mind to suffer the one to be affected [words crossed out] without in some measure influencing the other.

['Lass' crossed out] The lassitude attends [word crossed out] which accompanies disease is generally fatal to virtue as it [word crossed out] ['the soul from exertion to still the torrent of the passions & to resist' crossed out] ['temptation renders the soul indifferent' crossed out] introduces that inertness & indifference & honesty with regard to the ideal value of reputation ? ['of virtue' crossed out] which ['inf' crossed out] lays its subject more peculiarly open to the temptations of poverty & the solicitations of the passions.

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It is for this reason that the appallations of Runner & Prostitute are Synonymous - ['It is' crossed out] & for this reason that our streets are crowded With wretches whose infamy can only be equalled by their misery Wretches who yet deserve our commiserations as they have ['They' crossed out] have found themselves unable to resist the allurements of vice and they have suffered themselves to fall down the stream of pleasure tho'[ough] they knew from the experience that it infallibly [word crossed out] led to wretchedness not untimely infamy disease and death ...... ['If we speculate on a larger scale the' crossed out]

['source will become' crossed out] If we look forward with prophetic eye to future generations the picture will [word crossed out] become yet more dreadful when we view a long line on increasing posterity inheriting the diseases & bad qualities the ['vices' crossed out] of their ancestors - ['Where shall we exclaim is the muscular' crossed out] all ['arm of the Briton where ? his manly .......... virtues' crossed out] see devolving into When we [word crossed out] the manly virtuous Briton ['supplanted by' crossed out] the puny ['the' crossed out] offspring of Consumption the hereditary [word crossed out] victim of vice.

['But had I merely But had I merely' crossed out] If there were no possibility of remedying this evil without the discontinuance of the ['manufact' crossed out] employment I should have spared myself the pains of writing this paper for the "still small voice" of ['Ben' crossed out] Philanthropy & apathetic Benevolence is lost on the ['unfeeling'] organs of Trade & Commerce But